


Myths & Legends

by thisbluespirit



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: intoabar, Crossover, Episode: s10e01 The Pilot, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 01:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14582049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: We're all stories in the end, it's true - and, sooner or later, all stories find themselves in Storybrooke.





	Myths & Legends

**Author's Note:**

> For Intoabar 2018: "The Twelfth Doctor walks into a bar and meets... Snow White!"
> 
>  " _Every story ever told really happened._ " (Twelfth Doctor, "Hell Bent".)

The Doctor was not in the best of moods when he walked into the small town’s diner – Granny’s, according to the sign. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with either the town or diner – so far as he knew – but until a few moments ago he had been in his rooms at St Luke’s, in Bristol, which was where he was meant to be, for very important reasons. Now he was somewhere in what looked like North America, but could be anywhere in time and space or nowhere at all; it was always so hard to tell. What was worse was that this time it wasn’t even his fault. He had been doing exactly what he had promised, even though it was mind-numbingly boring and linear.

Unfortunately for his good intentions, his wardrobe had suddenly started glowing and so naturally he had had to take a look. What else could a person do when their wardrobe had lights shining inside it? There could be aliens, or it could be on fire. It was just bad luck that what _had_ turned out to be inside was a portal that had landed him here. If it had been a fire or an alien, or a torch someone had left on, everything would have been fine; he could have sorted that out in no time at all.

Now he was stuck somewhere that was halfway across the planet, or maybe the whole way across the universe, or an alternate dimension, because you never knew with portals. He much preferred travel by TARDIS.

“Tea, please,” he said to the proprietor, presumably the eponymous Granny. “Sweet. Six sugars.”

“Six?”

“Well, five if there’s a shortage or something.”

He continued to enjoy a good glare around the place, which seemed to him to be much too cheerful and ordinary, and waited for his tea, tapping out a light rhythm on the counter.

“You,” said someone from beside him, “look as if you could use some cheering up.”

The Doctor turned to see a dark-haired woman sit on the stool next to him. She gave him a smile. He glared harder and made sure he employed his eyebrows in full-on attack formation, but she didn’t seem to be much deterred. He hoped they weren’t broken. They were good eyebrows.

“I’m Snow,” she said. “Welcome to Storybrooke.”

The Doctor blinked. “Where?”

“Storybrooke. Why don’t you tell me who you are, and I’ll see what we can do to help you?”

“Don’t these eyebrows mean anything to you?”

Snow gave him a closer look. “Um. Should they?”

“I’m giving off distinct ‘Keep Away Human’ signals. I mean, I’m pretty sure I am. I’ve practised.”

Snow accepted a drink of hot chocolate with cream and cinnamon on the top from Granny. “One of my best friends is literally Grumpy. I’m not easily put off when someone is in need of help.”

“That’s an understatement,” said a woman from behind her, pausing on her way out of the diner. “One time I wanted to be alone to work through my issues, she broke the damn door down just so we could have a heart to heart.”

Snow frowned. “Regina, that’s not helpful right now. Anyway, there were reasons – and, hey, I used to be a bandit. Old habits die hard.” She turned back to face the Doctor as the other woman left. He found it wasn’t hard to imagine Snow breaking a door down, probably wearing that exact same determined look. 

“The point is, you need a helping hand and I’m here to give it.” Snow didn’t add “or else” but the Doctor felt it was implied in there somewhere.

He put down his tea and looked at Snow with more interest. He also abandoned the attack eyebrows mode. (Nobody wanted to be Grumpy Mark II. Grumpy, yes. Grumpy the Second, no.) “Who says I’m in need of help?”

“You’re telling me you’re not?”

He gave a quarter smile in acknowledgement of the hit. Besides, even if she was annoying even by human standards, which were generally pretty annoying as it was, she also seemed friendly and helpful, which was better than his usual luck with strangers. Most people were more inclined to be unfriendly and unhelpful, and then usually they tried to kill him. “I came here by accident and I need to get back to where I was before. The problem is, I arrived via the wardrobe and I don’t seem to have a return ticket.”

“Oh,” said Snow, wrinkling her nose in consideration of his predicament. “I’m sorry. Still, I’m sure we can find a way to get you home. It’s something my family are good at.”

The Doctor stared. “You, er, didn’t think there was anything a tad peculiar about me saying I got here via the wardrobe?”

“You’re not the first,” said Snow. She shrugged. “Magic beans, pirate ships, mermaids, airships – there are all kinds of ways of crossing realms if you try hard enough.”

“Not forgetting that time my whole diner got taken off to Camelot,” put in Granny as she moved past. “The paintwork’s never been the same since.”

“Only _once_ ,” said Snow, “and Charming’s painted it twice for you since.” She turned back to the Doctor. “So, where _are_ you from? How about you describe it and then maybe we can work out which story it is.”

“Um. I’m from Bristol. Currently. Not originally. St Luke’s University. Where a very angry person will be cursing me for not being there right about now, I should imagine. And some students will be happy because they’ll get to skip a lecture.”

Snow raised both eyebrows and gave only an “Oh,” for a moment before she recovered herself. “You’re from England? Like, the regular one in this world?”

“Probably,” said the Doctor, feeling uncomfortably normal. “It’s a bit hard to tell with portals, but I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d travelled in time. Alternate dimension, though, that’s a possibility, because I didn’t think that America tended to take that kind of thing in its stride. Not yet, at least.”

Snow patted his hand. “No, it’s just Storybrooke. People out there don’t know about this place. But whichever it is, we can help. I’m sure we can put something together for a flight home. Or if you need the portal, you can show us where you arrived and we’ll find a way to open it, no matter how long it takes. Or there should be some magic beans ready in a couple of weeks.”

“No, no, not a couple of weeks. There’s a thing – a promise – a dangerous promise in a box. There’s no telling what she – it – might do with a whole two weeks. I mean, Nardole would never speak to me again, so there’s an upside to everything, but you’ve got to take the cloud with the silver lining, haven’t you?”

“I’ve always thought of that more the other way around.”

The Doctor gave an actual half-smile. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“We will get you back,” said Snow and squeezed his hand. He found he didn’t mind all that much. “I promise.”

The Doctor nodded and finished off his tea. Something else passed through his mind for belated processing and he turned to look at her again, so intently she leaned backwards. “Wait,” he said. “Bandit? You don’t look like a bandit.”

“Well, I was,” said Snow.

The Doctor ginned. “Me too. I can reduce them to quaking jellies with nothing but a spoon and an air guitar solo.”

“I preferred a crossbow,” said Snow. “Which story _are_ you from?”

“That’s a very odd way to put it,” the Doctor said. “And you probably don’t know it because it’s still going on here and now. It’s a very long story, written in several archaic languages, and some bits are very boring; you wouldn’t want to know. Trust me, I was there.”

“Wait… you’re a professor from England who came through a wardrobe?”

“No, definitely not! I mean, yes, but not like that. Not that professor. I know it probably was that business with the TARDIS that started the whole thing, although I _told_ Jack it was bound to annoy his friend –”

“I’m not sure I understood a word of that.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Good. Okay. And I teach science. Not English literature.”

“Oh,” said Snow. “Well, you know, if the worst happens and you get stuck here a while, we could use a science teacher. I meant for Dr Jekyll to take some of the classes and Dr Whale – I mean, Frankenstein – to do the others, but then Jekyll turned out to be evil and died, and Whale’s just seriously unreliable, you know?”

“I really do have to get home,” said the Doctor, although he was doing some eyebrow raising at the way she’d beaten him on the improbable name-dropping front. For the moment, anyway. He was willing to bet she’d never been married to Elizabeth I. “So, if you have got a magic bean, or a wardrobe that goes the other way, I’d be grateful.”

“Yes,” said Snow, and nodded. “Of course. I’ll get everyone together and we’ll sort something out for you. Well, not Emma – she’s still trying to get that stupid troll out of the library, but everyone else.”

“Er. Yes. Thank you,” said the Doctor. He brightened, though, at the news that this place had trolls who liked to read. It was more than you could say for Bristol. “I could come back,” he said. “By TARDIS. Which is a different kind of magic door, but more reliable. Usually. Some of the time, anyway. If your students wouldn’t mind a guest lecturer.”

Snow beamed at him and held out her hand. “It’s a deal.”

He shook it. He looked at her sideways. “Snow?” he said. “Isn’t that an odd name for a human?”

“Snow White,” she said, and raised her chin. “The princess.”

“I was beginning to think you might be,” he said. “I’m the Doctor, by the way.”

“ _The_ Doctor?” said Snow, her eyes widening. “The one with the magic box and a hundred faces? You know, there are stories about you from all round the realms. I _really_ thought you must be a myth.”

“Oh, I am,” he said, and winked. “Aren’t we all?”


End file.
